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Cinema

To the haters

1) The science was, well, a bit crap. But it's a blockbuster movie, not a documentary, so I suggest you get over it. Go and see The Core for some *really* horrible, shout-at-the-telly stuff.

2) The first two film had some of the best sustained-tension set-pieces in a PG-rated film since Jaws. JP: The first T-Rex encounter; The kids in the kitchen (OMFG my heart rate has hit 160); Woman vs velociraptor at the power sub-station. JP2: The trailer home and the cliff; raptors in the long grass; raptors at the abandoned comms outpost.

3) Ok, you're right about the third film. And the bit in New York in JP 2.

Hold on a minute

Prefer the book

Good old t-Rex

I watched JP1 at the cinema as soon as it came out in 1993. The room was completely packed, many young children were present. When the T-Rex broke through the fence a few children started to be scared, and when it roared many of the children had to leave the room with their parents, several didn't come back in. I went back to watch it other three times in the following days, just for the T-Rex and the raptors in the kitchen scenes.

what about the CM-2?

Connection Machine

It was a CM-5, not a CM-2. I programmed on a relative of the CM-2 (the CM-200) and it didn't look like the CM-5 in the film, not that any of them were particularly quick. The CM-2 series was limited by using a SPARCstation to control execution so compiling code on the host actually slowed down execution on the CM-200. The CM-5 used SPARC2 CPUs so wasn't really all that powerful either. They only used it in the film because it looked pretty but Thinking Machines failed shortly afterwards because their machines were uncompetitive compared with cheaper machines like the MasPar. I ported my C* code from the CM-200 to MasPar's MPL and it was faster on a 1024 processor box than it was on the 16384 processor CM-200.

don't want all three

The first film was great. We had it on Laserdisc and watched it several times. The third was just ok. I prefer to believe the second movie does not exist. I can't see buying a boxed set of all three films, even though I don't currently have any of them on DVD, because I just couldn't bring myself to own the second film.

God I loved this film as a kid, the kitchen scene and the Raptors in general have left me with a irrational fear of them to this day oddly the day after I saw the film we went on a school trip to Liverpool museum and they at the time had two raptor fossils in a display, I turned round and there right behind me by about a foot was a rubber head of a raptor that sent me flying back in terror and making a fool of myself.

Optional

Dino CGI

Coincidentally, this summer we went to Dinoland in Norfolk. They have the original T Rex leg from the film there - the one which stomps into the mud in that iconic shot. Apparently there was also a full-sized pair of motorised T Rex legs, so that they could film through and around the running T Rex legs at the actors running away. But they never got that working properly, so it didn't make it into the film.

BTW, I can't recommend Dinoland highly enough if you're in the area and have kids. It's one of the best days out in Norfolk for the least money.

The thing that annoyed me about the second one - the one with the van on the cliff - is that the main characters killed dozens of people through utter recklessness, yet they are made out to be the "heroes" or "victims" of the movie, the ones we are meant to sympathize with. Didn't they even bring a kid to the island for some reason? how reckless is that?

The hunters came with the right gear. Sure they came to capture dinosaurs, but they weren't recklessly endangering people's lives. They had a plan and a load of equipment to do so. My thinking is that they would have succeeded perhaps with no casualties if the "heroes" of the movie hadn't interfered.

Because what "heroes" decided to do was sabotage the hunters camp by releasing the caged dinosaurs. In particular a very large one. That alone could have killed many people, they were lucky that charging dinosaur didn't crush anyone (movie director made sure of that, would have been too obvious to the audience I guess that the cage release was wrong if anyone had died). All we got was a jeep exploding and tents destroyed. But it did destroy the hunter's communication equipment leaving them stranded.

Two of the "heroes" then compounded their negligence by taking the captured and injured T-Rex baby back to the van, jeopardising their own team - and in fact one of their team was killed as a consequence. He even tried to warn them of danger (before coming to try and help them) but they ignored his frantic phone calls (which is highly reckless in that kind of environment).

The "evil" hunters actually ended up rescuing the "heroes".

If you remember, after that, there was an entire journey across the island where hunters were picked off one by one by raptors and other beasts - that only happened because a) they all had to move across the island because the "heroes" had p***ed off the T-Rex mum and dad and b) they couldn't call for help because their caged dino-release act had destroyed the hunter's communication equipment and their reckless act of bringing the t-rex cub back to the van had ended up destroying their own.

So the deaths of dozens of men were very much on their hands.

Yet in the end they are made out to be nice people who were victims of a terrible ordeal. I can't remember which, if any, of the hunters survived, but if I was one of them in that situation I would definitely want the "heroes" of the movie prosecuted when I got home.

I don't know why this annoys me so much, it's the way the wrongdoing is so obvious yet the audience, script writers and move directors seem so oblivious to it.